Methi Recipes – Side Dish

I cook greens at least twice a week. Earlier it was only spinach and methi. Only recently I started using beet greens, swiss chard, turnip greens etc. Even though methi is bitter we all like it in our family. Our favorites are the methi theplas, sambar in the beet greens sambar method and another dry curry using channa daal and methi leaves.

Recently I saw a recipe for aloo methi subzi in Sailu’s blog. That day I was going to cook methi anyway, so I decided to try Sailu’s recipe itself. It was very simple to make and tasted awesome too. Very different from the methi recipes I make. I pretty much followed her recipe but for some minor changes.

I used around 2 cups of methi. The methi which we get here in US is not as tender as the ones which is available in India, it’s very big like curry leaves. Sometimes it can be very bitter. So my mother in law gave me this tip of frying the cleaned, rinsed and drained leaves in little ghee to reduce the bitterness. But Sailu’s idea of sprinkling salt and sugar on the methi leaves and squeezing out the liquids also works like a charm. I also fried the methi along with the tomatoes. Since the methi is not
tender, it will not be cooked properly if added in the end. The methi masala tasted very good with chapathis. This serves 2 adults.

The very same day I also saw another recipe for a methi chole in her blog. I bookmarked it immediately and tried it last week. This is yet another easy to prepare side dish for bhaturas and rotis. Another speciality of this dish is, it does not use onions or garlic, and yet it tastes great. If you use canned chick peas like me, this dish can be prepared in no time. In this recipe also I used more methi than specified (3 to 4 cups loosely packed). I used one 15.5oz can chick peas, which is approximately 1 and 1/2 cups of cooked beans. I also used oil instead of ghee for frying the spices. This measurement serves 2 adults.

I love your methi dishes! They look so good. I too sprinkle salt and leave it aside to get rid of the bitterness. Aamchoor added also helps. I make aloo methi very often – almost once in two weeks! The pictures never come out well enough to blog.

Sorry for troubling again,Saw the biscotti comment now only.I will send it across today itself,thanks for including.They were mostly dry I felt because,they were twice baked and were like toasted,but I must say they were moist especially the part around cherries,as the cherries i used were sugared.So I would say 90% dry -10 % moist. Atleast mine were 🙂 Hope I satisfied the question.

Madhu,
Saw ur comments now only.I had doubts regarding marshmallow and jello.Thanks.As for the cake when cooled,it becomes a bit chewy and also would be a bit dry if you have reduced the amount of water drizzled(I experimented 😀 ), apart from that no other reasons I found
Thanks again for informing me about the jello and marshmallow 🙂 I took the easy way out by using these.